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Cycling and poverty reduction |
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 As long as the significance of cycling in the fight against poverty, the improvement of safety, the environment and the quality of life is denied or ignored and as long as local partners do not have the necessary means and know-how to develop and implement policies themselves, development cooperation makes sense to help obtain direct results for improving the situation of the urban poor.
In order to be efficient and significant, cycling has to be taken into account in many public and private policies, strategies and sectors of activity as a transport mode in its own right. For a city, this means for example that planning and design have to include cycling in all fields, whereas the industry has to market bicycles that correspond to the technical and financial possibilities of the cyclists. An integrated approach of the overall traffic and transport system is needed: - man/woman, with his/her needs and interests as a citizen and traffic participant,
- vehicle, in this case the bicycle,
- the road or infrastructure and its rules and ways to use it.
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